I’ll do it in a bit

‘Well I could do it now, but this needs my attention.’ ‘Oh this is more urgent, so I’ll spend my time doing it, I’ll do my writing later, when I have time.’ ‘I only have half an hour, I can’t give my writing the proper amount of time needed to really get into it.’

Do any of these sound familiar? Maybe you have your own ways of putting things off, but I think most of us do it. Procrastination is something that we all do and yet we don’t intend to do it. Writing is a victim of procrastination because we feel that we need to give it time to work. Or at least, enough time to do it justice.

Writing, is just like any other hobby. You can give it as little or as much time as you wish. Do not be afraid to give it ten minutes here or half an hour there. Maybe on the commute to work, you can let your mind wander and consider names for characters. Perhaps a scene could be fleshed out. Brushing your teeth is a mundane task that we all know how to do, so that would be a good time too. Just remember to put the brush back when you’ve finished.

Of course, the best time to do it, is when you are most relaxed (something which I will talk about in a later post) as this is when you let your imagination off the leash without even knowing it. But, you can always find times and places where you are not busy or stressed or anything else.

Imagination is like a shy animal. It cannot be forced out of it’s burrow, it has to be left alone to peek it’s nose out by itself. When it is happy, then it will come out to play. Of course, the more you show that it is okay, the more it will do it. Before you know it, your imagination will pop out again even after a disturbance, such a phone call or a doorbell.

If that doesn’t work, try and incentivise writing. Say to yourself, I’ll do this thing I enjoy after I’ve done some writing. You’ll get a double whammy; you’ve done some writing and you get your reward.